BASIC NEEDS
According to Maslow, there is a hierarchy of basic needs that we all wish to meet.
We will take action, moving toward or away from, depending on whether we believe that our needs will or will not be met by the people or situations we encounter, the obstacles we face, and the challenges that confront us.
ABRAHAM MASLOW, an American psychologist, had a theory that people's behaviour is determined by certain basic needs. Maslow ranks human needs as follows: (1) physiological; (2) security and safety; (3) love and feelings of belonging; (4) competence, prestige, and esteem; (5) self-fulfilment; and (6) curiosity and the need to understand.
Psychologists used to think that we would try to minimise stimulation as much as possible. That may tell us something about the people who ascribed to that theory! Of course, many people do try to get away from uncomfortable feelings (not all - think of the dangerous sports fanatics, or The Fight Club, or Rocky 1 -27), and, in terms of Characters, some may try to avoid whilst other seek pain. Others may pursue pleasure, or not feel they deserve any!
More recently, those who theorise about motivation - and we need to do that if we are going to create convincing characters - suggest that people may strive to optimise rather than minimize stimulation. In this case we, or our characters, may have a greater need for variety, change, difference. Our Protagonist's intense curiosity may help make sense of hir exploratory behaviour: why did s/he enter the cave? Because s/he wanted to find out! How come s/he's sorting through the files in the enemy's office at night? Well, it's in hir nature, you see!
Old Abe's ideas continue to influence people in the 'people business.'
Although we will try to meet the needs lower down the ladder before we give much attention to those higher up, my own observations suggest that people's experiences often cause them to despair of certain needs being met e.g. love or belonging. They may strive instead for, say, prestige. When we do this in life, any acclaim we get may seem rather a hollow victory!
Attempting to compensate for the unmet need to belong or be loved, we may seek more and yet more prestige! Our Character's transformation may beging with the painful awareness that the glittering prizes aren't satisfying enough, or the liberating realisation that someone, somewhere, always loved them really. Or may yet do so!
Another aspect of Maslow's model could be useful in giving our Characters depth:
Metaneeds and metapathologiesAnother way in which Maslow approach the problem of what is self-actualization is to talk about the special, driving (basic) needs of the self-actualizers. They need the following in their lives in order to be happy:
- Truth, rather than dishonesty.
- Goodness, rather than evil.
- Beauty, not ugliness or vulgarity.
- Unity, wholeness, and transcendence of opposites, not arbitrariness or forced choices.
- Aliveness, not deadness or the mechanization of life.
- Uniqueness, not bland uniformity.
- Perfection and necessity, not sloppiness, inconsistency, or accident.
- Completion, rather than incompleteness.
- Justice and order, not injustice and lawlessness.
- Simplicity, not unnecessary complexity.
- Richness, not environmental impoverishment.
- Effortlessness, not strain.
- Playfulness, not grim, humorless, drudgery.
- Self-sufficiency, not dependency.
- Meaningfulness, rather than senselessness.
At first glance, you might think that everyone obviously needs these. But consider: If you were living through an economic depression or a war, or living in a ghetto or in rural poverty, would you worry about these issues, or would you worry more about getting enough to eat and a roof over your head? In fact, Maslow believes that much of what is wrong with the world comes down to the fact that very few people really are interested in these values -- not because they're bad people, but because their basic needs have not been taken care of!
When a self-actualizer doesn’t get these needs fulfilled, they respond with metapathologies -- a list of problems as long as the list of metaneeds! Let me summarize it by saying that, when forced to live without these values, the self-actualizer develops depression, despair, disgust, alienation, and a degree of cynicism.
This is taken from an excellent web-site created by a Mr Boeree.The first click will take you to a more detailed explanation of the Needs theory. Check out his table of contents if you want information on various model of personality and the people who devised those models.
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/maslow.html
If you are thinking about having a therapist or a therapeutic model as part of your creation, you might find Boereee's and this link interesting and useful.
http://encarta.msn.com/find/Concise.asp?z=1&pg=2&ti=761568080